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Ever wonder how you can get your little one interested in music in your homeschool? As a homeschool father, we use Spotify in our routine and the benefits are numerous, let’s show you!
You should use Spotify in the homeschool because it has audible books for all ages and not only great songs but sing-along lyrics they can sing and learn from. These features and sharpening their listening, typing, and spelling skills during search and use of the app and it’s also invaluable to their music education and interest.
Read on to get more details of how we have fallen in love with Spotify and found it an invaluable resource for our homeschool!
Great Audible Books and Read Alouds
There are audiobooks on Spotify if you didn’t already know. Just search for “Homeschooling” and find a playlist made just for kids. There are 100s of books and over 54 hours of playtime available. You’re sure to find some favorites of your own. There are also many great classics and some good titles you can listen to at bedtime, in the car, or during some downtime waiting in a restaurant. This is how we first learned how to use Spotify in our homeschool routine. My son loves to read by himself, but listening to audiobooks is how we first got him hooked.
Within the app, you can create a playlist specific to them so they can pull up the music or audiobooks quickly. My seven-year-old son enjoyed listening to my music. But he learned how to use the app to find his music and he created his playlist. If you didn’t already know, your children are sponges and they pick up songs and poems very quickly. Spotify is a super way to build up their listening and reading skills as well as develop an interest in music.
If you want to learn more about how to easily add music to your homeschool curriculum, we have this informative article we wrote about what we do in our homeschool.
Be the DJ in the car or home
Our son loves music and he also plays the electric drums so he is always keeping an ear out for songs he can play in his drum class. His teacher requires him to practice his performance songs for his church and also the music school. We like him to learn about music because it brings an enriching side of education to his homeschool studies.
If you want to learn more about why we feel electronic drums are the best musical instrument for homeschool, please check it out.
We encourage him to use Spotify in his free time or when we are in the car on the way somewhere. He can become familiar with rhythm and beats and enjoy the music he wants to play and perform. Performing on a stage is a great way for him to focus and develop discipline in practicing music and these skills rub off on other areas of his studies. It’s well known by researchers that music has so many benefits for children and their education, that it’s no wonder Spotify and other tools are becoming more prevalent in classrooms.
Use the Lyrics Function to sing along!
The lyrics function in Spotify is brilliant for use in our homeschool routine. Our son learns the lyrics of his favorite songs and we feel this is a great way to practice music. He has fun and can sing along with the tunes. He also learns new vocabulary and some history and culture if he’s listening to the right music of course. It’s also a way for him to stay occupied and make the best use of his time during some downtime in a car ride or traffic jam. On the way to soccer, he can listen to some of his favorite uplifting music to get him in the mood for practice or a game.
The lyrics feature on Spotify is also useful for learning and remembering songs to play for performance or pleasure. We found that researchers have learned that reading the lyrics during music practice has a positive effect on the experience. The lyrics feature has only been online since November of 2021 but such a cool thing!
“Seeing the lyrics indirectly increases recall accuracy of lyrics and rhythm through its positive effect on cognitive load”
Mediating effect of cognitive load in song learning with visually presented lyrics
I can attest to this because my son can recite lyrics much better than I can. When I was a kid we didn’t have such amazing resources, such as Spotify and access to lyrics at our fingertips that play along with the song.
Searching And Typing Helps Their Informal Learning
Voice search assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa can be helpful educational tools in a homeschool. There is research to back this up if you want a quick informative read. At first, our son started asking Alexa to set a timer for our cooking or other needs. He also helped check the current temperature and weather forecast so we knew to take a coat or an umbrella.
But he would also ask to play songs on Spotify, so he had to pay attention to the song’s names. This is a fun and helpful method for him to appreciate music. It also illustrates how important a song’s title, album, and artist’s name are if you want to play your favorite song.
After our son began to use these functions, he also became more interested in the details of the singers, their background, and where they lived. And Spotify has all of these details which can be fun to learn about for our son. Building up a homeschooler’s interest and curiosity is a lifelong journey for all of us, so we began to appreciate what Spotify can bring to our homeschool experience.
You can filter explicit content on Spotify
I’m sure you might be concerned about explicit content while they are listening and searching on Spotify, right? There is a special feature that can filter this on the app so don’t worry. In our family, we are concerned about this matter as well. But we took this opportunity to teach about how to make sure they don’t listen to this kind of music.
Firstly, you can highlight how to know there is explicit content, and show them the markings on the album cover of a song. The large “E” on the thumbnail within Spotify signifies there are some bad words in the song. And we find this is a good way to teach our son about filtering only good songs to listen to. He even helped me with my playlists and found there were some bad songs and helped me delete them! We’ve even noticed that he scans the lyrics of a new song to make sure the songs are clean. We think this is a good habit for him to be able to discern a good song by himself.
You can see below there is also a function in the Spotify app to filter explicit content. Just turn the function on by toggling the button on the right-hand side. That’s the desktop player view.
If you select or search for a song that has explicit content, then it will be greyed out in the view and your child won’t be able to play the song. We are using Spotify in our homeschooling when we are in the car and when we play it through my laptop and Alexa. We trust our son to use it properly but he doesn’t use Spotify unsupervised.
You can see what a song looks like when you have the filter on like below. If you clicked on the song Sugar, for example, you wouldn’t be able to play it. The first song Maps is ok in white
On the mobile app, the explicit control filter is also enabled as I set it on the desktop app. Of course, if your child is old enough to know how to adjust these settings then they will be able to listen to anything. There is Spotify for Kids, but you need to buy that with a family sharing plan which we don’t think is necessary. You can see below the filter is also enabled.
We focus on teaching him to be aware of what’s good to listen to in music and what is not. Our goal is to teach him in homeschooling that there are things we probably should not listen to and focus on good content. Now when he hears something questionable he brings it up and we check. I have personally reported songs to Spotify that have slipped through their filter.
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